Driving EV across France

Hi!

I have been an EV driver for nearly 2 years and been up to Scotland and down to Cornwall. These journeys have not been without their issues though. On the way back from Aberdeen I had to break into Booths car park in Penrith to make sure I could do my final charge to get home, and would have had problems in Cornwall without 32A destination charging!

Has anyone made the journey across France recently? I am optimistic that Ionity and recent opening of Tesla will make this fairly easy, but still a bit concerned about chargers out of action and the dreaded queues, especially as I am making the trip at half term.

I have seen loads of queues at UK chargers in the last 4-5 months. Cobham Services Gridserve and Ionity all in use with queue, Skelton Services 6 Ionity with a 4 deep queue a few weeks ago.

Cheers….

I try and avoid service station charge point, they are pretty much always full and crap, have much better experience just off the main motorway network. you really need french zap-map….surely there is something.

EV driving in Europe

Seems ABRP is what you need, personally i’d go for it. it’ll be an adventure :)

Yeah got Octopus Electroverse app which shows most charge points across Europe, and allows you to pay on many.

Tesla model 3 here full to the brim with camping stuff and stuff on the back of the car. We did this last summer Calais to Caen to Concarneau and then back again. So been a tesla it makes it a bit easier with the superchargers! But we had no problems on the long journeys, it was the smaller top-ups when we were somewhere that was more of an issue. We did use the occasional Ionity and there was usually a small queue. I would make sure you are fully charged before leaving the UK, so that you can get a good distance away from the point of entry. Good apps that worked in France where Bonnet and Octopus Electroverse. With these two to are mostly covered.

We regularly do the run down to Perpignan (in an ICE) and have seen a growing number of UK plated Tesla’s on the Superchargers. Always seems to be plenty of capacity on the off-autoroute chargers usually in the motel places.

I use Mobive which also gives me access to IZIVIA charge points. It’s EDF. There are lots of 18kW chargers, an ever increasing number of 50kW but very few over that.

La carte des bornes électriques IZIVIA 

We drove to Annecy in an Audi Q4 last summer and charged on the autoroute with no queues except at Langres on A26 where there was a small queue, mostly with Benelux or UK cars. Used the Audi sat nav and ABRP to plan stops.

Charging was free around Lake Annecy on 22kW chargers using my credit card to authorise, but nothing ever appeared on bills. Not sure if this was a mistake or by design.